Penrith Panthers 2025 season review
- Overview
- Highs
- Lows
- 2025 RLB Player of the Year – Nathan Cleary
- Reasons to be positive in 2026
- My 2025 prediction – 2nd
- Final 2025 position – 7th (-5)
Overview
The Panthers’ dynasty finally came to an end in 2025, but for a team that were sitting bottom after 12 rounds, they can be very proud of how close they came in the end to winning a fifth-straight Premiership.
A stirring second half of the year saw them climb all the way up to 7th, and they briefly looked like cracking the top four as well. Convincing wins over the Warriors and the Bulldogs in the first two weeks of the Finals left them as red-hot favourites against the Broncos in the semi-final, but Penrith surprisingly gave up a 14-0 lead to lose their first Finals game since the 2021 Qualifying Final, and bring their dominance to an end.
Highs
A nine-game winning run between rounds 13 and 23 saw the Panthers muscle their way into the top eight and keep their Premiership hopes alive after a slow start.
They breezed through the first two weekends of finals as well, with a convincing 24-8 win over the Warriors in week one and a 46-26 thumping of the Bulldogs in week two.
Nathan Cleary was one of their standouts as usual, while his new halves partner Blaize Talagi grew in confidence as the season wore on, and Casey McLean established himself as a first grader at the tender age of 19.
Lows
Just three wins from their opening 11 games left the Panthers with a mountain to climb.
Ultimately though, they came very close to climbing it, but their 16-14 loss to the Broncos, which signalled an end to their season, was another low point. Mainly because they were 14-0 up at half-time, and it was the first time in 99 matches they’d lost a game after leading by 10 points or more.
2025 RLB Player of the Year – Nathan Cleary
Their superstar halfback stepped up when they needed him, as he always does. To measure his contribution purely by numbers would be a massive injustice to everything else he offers, but for the record, he scored six tries, had 17 try assists, forced 25 drop outs and had a conversion success rate of just under 90% in 2025.
Reasons to be positive in 2026
The Panthers came within a whisker of a sixth-straight Grand Final, and a lot of their key players are still in the early stages of their careers. The likes of Casey McLean and Blaize Talagi are only going to get better, and they have one of the strongest squads on paper when it comes to depth, with the likes of Daine Laurie, Paul Alamoti and Matt Eisenhuth often left biding their time for an opportunity when everyone’s fit.
My 2025 prediction – 2nd
Final 2025 position – 7th (-5)
I can’t be too disappointed with this one, as over the second half of the season the Panthers played like one of the top two teams in the comp. Maybe that’s a bit of a wishy-washy response, but if we discount the first 10 rounds or so, this prediction definitely would have gone better!
